Purple Testament
by SirOuroboros
Summary: Harper chooses a course that sets him against his old crew mates
1. Chapter 1

The Purple Testament

Ch 1

Disclaimer: Don't own any of these characters except a couple of original ones that may show up.

Synopsis: Harper sets out on a course that will bring him into opposition with his old friends

"I don't frigging believe this!" Seamus Harper stormed through the command deck doors.

"Don't believe what Mr. Harper?" The cool voice of Captain Dylan Hunt came from tactical.

"This!" Harper slapped a flexi down in front of the man he had followed literally to hell and back.

Hunt took a moment to scan over the document that had his chief engineer, not to mention one of the five smartest, or at least craziest people, he had met in more than three hundred years of life, so angry.

"I'm sorry Mr. Harper but I don't see what the fuss is over."

"You don't see what the "fuss" is over??" Hunt winced, Harpers voice was raised several decibels higher than any High Guard officer would have ever been allowed to use to a commanding officer, but then again after five years Hunt had almost gotten used to the "quirks" of this crew of rag tags.

"Maybe if you explained it?" Dylan slipped into his diplomat voice, it had worked on enraged Pyrians, no reason it shouldn't work on an over excited human.

"You tell me. You tell me what's wrong here." Harpers voice had dropped but the rage was still there, controlled but there.

"We scheduled a meeting between the various Neitzchian prides and Beka to present her as the Matriarch."

"Not just any prides Dylan, Drago-Katzov pride!"

"Yes they requested that a representative be allowed to attend."

"And it just slipped your mind??" Hunt winced, again, this time Harper's voice was climbing not just in decibels but pitch as well, so that the last word in the sentence verged on a frequency that only dogs, and he had to admit, Neitzchians, could hear.

"Look I'm sorry Harper, but there was no way we could exclude the largest most powerful pride out there."

"Sorry? YOU'RE sorry?!" Let me refresh your memory" Harper made a circle with his hands. "Earth and then flinging his hands apart, "BOOOM!"

"Mr. Harper," If Harper had been less enraged he would have noticed the warning tone in the captains voice. "That will be quite enough!" He understood that he couldn't expect anything like real discipline from them, even after all this time, but he would have the minimum respect due an officer of the High Guard and captain of a heavy battle cruiser.

Harper stopped in mid rant then lowered his head, Dylan braced himself for either an apology or another outburst, but what came next was something he had never imagined. Harper raised his head and looked Dylan straight in the eye. He had seen the young or at least young seeming, engineer in situations from deadly to ridiculous, but he had never seen that look in his eyes. For a moment he actually felt an urge to put extra distance between them.

"You're right about that Dylan, more right than you know. It is enough, more than enough." With that he spun on his heels and left command just a quickly as he had entered.

"Andromeda." The face of the ships AI appeared on the screen next to Hunt's head.

"Yes Captain?"

"Please keep an eye on Mr. Harper." He had no idea what the last part had meant but given the young mans past history and proven abilities it was probably better to be safe than sorry.

"For he has come to open the purple testament of bloody war" Shakespeare Richard III


	2. Chapter 2

Purple testament

Purple testament

Ch.2

Harper stalked through the corridors leading from command to the machine shops. He couldn't believe that they would do that to him, after everything they had been through, everything they had done together, to just disregard what the Dragons had done, not just to him and the people he had loved but, to his home world. Humanity's home world, though, plenty of them tried to pretend otherwise, the birthplace of the entire race, even the birthplace of the Neitzchiens if you wanted to get technical. It was one thing to murder, torture and enslave individuals, nasty but it happened, but to murder an entire world, for no reason anyone knew of, that was a whole new level of evil. To wipe out ten thousand years of accumulated history, to destroy the foundation of two species, and again for no reason, no reason at all except, except what? The thought brought Harper up cold. Why DID the Neitzchiens destroy Earth? It couldn't have been a threat to them, dirty, diseased and irradiated by three centuries of occupation and repeated Magog attacks it was no threat to anybody. Wait a minute, what if Earth wasn't a threat NOW, but could be in the future. After all Trance could see at least a little way into the future, so the Abyss probably could too since it was one of her people. The Abyss wouldn't care if Earth, or maybe not Earth, maybe the human race with Earth to rally it, was a threat to the ubers, but if it was a threat to the Abyss? That would be a whole other ball game. Harper went from hot rage to icy calculation. Why would the Abyss consider humans a threat, especially since it had the Andromeda and the New Commonwealth to worry about? Or maybe it didn't see those as a threat. It was millions, more like billions, of years old; no way was it going in without a backup plan. Not even ubers, arrogant as they were, did anything without a backup plan. Icy calculation switched to warming curiosity mixed with dread. If the Abyss had though of humans as a threat and sent its uber allies, more like minions, to try to stop that particular future then it must have had a reason to believe it would survive against Andromeda. Which meant that there was a better than

even chance that it had.

"Oh crap!" Haper whipped around and headed back to command this time at a dead run


	3. Chapter 3

Purple Testament

Thanks for all the positive feedback, you keep reading and I'll keep writing.

Purple Testament

Ch. 3

"Dammit!!" Harper slammed the machine shop locker as his frustration, fear and anger boiled over. They wouldn't even listen, why wouldn't they listen?

"Don't you think you're over reacting a little Mr.Harper?" He deepened his voice obviously imitating Dylan.

"Harper just relax ok, we won." This time he made his voice higher pitched, with a sarcastic lilt, just like Beka used.

"Harper?" The unexpected voice from the door made him spin around.

"Trance?" The golden skinned young women stood framed in the doorway unsure of her welcome.

"What do you want?" Harper wasn't sure what brought his one time best friend here.

"Can I come in?" Her voice was hesitant, something he still remembered from the "old"

her.

"I guess" He sank down on the bunk he had placed in the corner. Harper _had _quarters, somewhere, but he usually just ran until he dropped, wherever that happened to be. So he had bunks in every machine shop and in odd nooks and crannies in the engine rooms also.

She came over and set down next to him.

"You know you're not wrong."

"Not wrong? Now what does that mean?" He remembered that she hadn't said anything during the entire "meeting".

"Well you're not right either."

"Ok now I'm good and confused."

"The things I see, they're not for sure, just maybes you understand?"

"Ok so far."

"Well I think that you might be right."

"If I'm right then why didn't you say anything?"

"Because even if you are there's nothing the Andromeda or the Commonwealth can do about it anyway."

"Why wouldn't they be able to do anything?"

"They're still too young, too small."

"And you're telling me this why??"

"Because this still isn't our perfect future, something is left."

"What?" Harper had the feeling that even if he did understand the answer, something that wasn't guaranteed anyway, he wouldn't like it.

"That's the problem; I'm not seeing that part of it. I just feel an… emptiness, something that's missing."

"Like maybe Earth?!" Harper still felt the burning in his gut remembering those last seconds.

"I'm sorry about Earth Harper, more sorry than you know, but no, not Earth itself more like the idea of Earth, if that makes any sense."

"Your right about one thing, it doesn't make sense." Then again maybe it did. No matter how bad it got the memories of what Earth had been before the ubers and the Magog, even before the Commonwealth, had kept burning in the hearts of even the most beaten down. It had bound the resistance together even more than hatred of the Neitzchians and kept them going against the overwhelming odds and endless defeats. The idea of Earth, not the burned out murdered cinder, but the Earth that gave birth to the human race drove not just those on Earth to survive but even the colonies that had struggled during the long night had used the talisman of the home world.

"Well anyway, like I said, you're not wrong." With that Trance stood up and gently touched his shoulder as she headed toward the door, leaving Harper to consider the idea of Earth.


	4. Chapter 4

The story moved from person to person, world to world, and drift to drift on tramp freighters, on flexis hidden in smugglers holds, and by word of mouth. Most dismissed it and put it out of their minds entirely; some remembered it, embellished it and passed it on as a drunken bar story or a tale told in the spaces between worlds. Some very few heard it and wondered, kept it with them and continued to pass it on to anyone that would stop and listen. No matter who told it or where it was told the core of it remained the same. Earth, was still out there, somewhere. The ubers had tried to destroy it or wanted everyone to think they had destroyed it, but it was all lies told by the "supermen". Earth was still out there and that meant that humanity still had something to hold it together. Slave worlds, Free Trade Guild, independents, technocracies and all the other flavors of human still had something in common. The spark of the idea of Earth was struck and it was beginning to burn.

"Captain! Captain Hunt!" The "ambassador" of the Drago-Katzov pride hurried up the ships corridor. Inside Dylan Hunt groaned but still turned his best "I'm here to be helpful" smile toward the Nietzchien huffing toward him. Everyone that knew or had ever known him would agree that he was the absolute definition of diplomacy but anyone that knew or had ever known him would also have recognized the slight tightening around his eyes as a sign that he was fast approaching the point where diplomacy failed and force lances became a primary option.

"Yes Mr. Ambassador" Hunt strongly suspected that Attila Goring, so called Duke of Nue Richland was no ambassador. He protested endlessly about being unable to approve anything without speaking with other "Dukes". In fact that was exactly all he could do, protest endlessly in an attempt to insure that none of the prides in attendance never got the chance to ratify any kind of agreement. Still Hunt couldn't have him thrown off the ship without more than suspicions

"I must protest Captain!"

"And what are you protesting? This time." Hunt added in his mind.

"You're harboring a known fugitive from Neitzchian justice ON THIS VERY SHIP!" His voice rose to a pitch that would have gotten him another Neitzchians bone blades at his throat. Something he knew very well, just as he knew from all accounts that this kludge captain wouldn't dare respond to the insult.

Hunt, who had heard and read more than any sane person would ever want to about what constituted "justice" to the Drago-Katzov, had to work hard to keep from laughing out loud at the very notion.

"Really Mr. Ambassador and who is that?"

"Your So called engineer Seamus Harper." The Neitzchien practically snarled the name.

"Mr. Harper is a valued member of this crew."

"Mr. Harper?! That kludge is a rabble rouser and traitor!" The "ambassador" was red faced and as near to losing control as any Neitzchien Hunt had ever seen.

"Do you have any proof of this?" Hunt was about to cross the line from really annoyed to dangerously angry. He knew that his crews past was, well

"checkered" would be putting it kindly, and he knew that there wasn't any love lost when it came to Harper and the people he derisively referred to as ubers but no one ever stood on Captain Dylan Hunt's decks and accused his crew or him of crimes without consequences.

"Proof? I am a Duke of the Drago-Katzov pride and I do not need to "prove" anything to see a miserable kludge put in his place!"

"ON MY SHIP." Hunt raised his voice to the command pitch that had cut through the noise and confusion of more than one battle and temporarily stunning the overwrought Neitzchien. "Any accusation requires proof. Now IF you will excuse me I'm expected in command. Oh and one last thing." Hunt lowered his voice and fixed the Neitzchian with a look that had been the last thing more than one Magog had seen. "If you ever, ever use that or any other "colorful" descriptions in reference to my crew again the Drago-Katzov pride will need to send a new ambassador."

"Was that a threat Captain?" Despite himself Goring had backed away from the flat deadliness of the kludge's stare. He tried to cover the moments fear with the accusation.

"A threat? I don't make _threats,_just a friendly warning." A hard heel turn as sharp as anything he had ever pulled off at the Academy and the ambassador was left gaping at the Captains retreating back.


	5. Chapter 5

Purple Testament

Ch 5

The story continued on, still growing, still changing, until it stopped being just a story to pass the time but became something else, something more_. _It became **Truth. **Revealed truth, a truth that needed no fact to support it, only needed to be believed to exist, only needed faith to be real.

Dylan sighed in relief as the familiar sounds of Command wrapped around him. He almost didn't notice the pair of legs sticking out from under the engineering console before he tripped over them.

"Mr. Harper?" Apparently whatever he was interrupting had been taking up all of the engineer's attention, at least judging from the reaction which consisted of a motion which seemed to combine jumping with crawling out of the extremely narrow access panel while trying to climb to his feet. All of these simultaneous motioned led to the obvious outcome. The sound of Harper's head banging into something, hopefully whatever it was wasn't delicate, or at least not too critical Dylan thought with a wince, followed by a string of muffled curses, many of which were in a language Dylan didn't recognize.

Harper finally extricated himself and after straightening his trade mark tool belt and untangled the unbelievably garish shirt that he was wearing, unbuttoned of course, then turned to face Dylan with what seemed to be his usual manic grin. "Yeah boss?"

"Do I even want to know what you're doing under there?" Even as he asked Dylan had the feeling that he wasn't going to like the answer.

"Doing? Just straightening out some power relays."

"Power relays?"

"Yeah well those guys from Terrazed that you had in here..." Harper trailed off.

"What about them?"

"Oh they were good enough; they just didn't have the Harper's genius."

"I see." On the one hand he really didn't see but on the other hand he was sure that he was better off not knowing. Harper was a lot of things but incompetent was never one of them.

"Anyway got places to be and stuff to fix." With that he turned and nearly bolted from Command.

"Andromeda?"

The ships avatar stood next to him in her holo form.

"Yes Captain?"

"Has Mr. Harper been acting… strangely?"

"More so than usual you mean?" The avatar voice was fond as well as exasperated.

"Yes that's what I mean." There were times when he wasn't entirely sure that the "upgrades" that Harper had made to Andromeda's personality core had been a good idea.

"No sir, nothing more unusual than usual."

"Right, well continue keeping him under surveillance." Dylan was headed to the Command station barely stopping himself before tripping, again, this time over the access hatch to the conduit that Harper had vacated without replacing.

"Harper." Dylan shook his head in resigned exasperation. His chief engineer's

manic energy had kept Andromeda running when he was the only person there was to do the job, but it also meant he tended to lose track of pretty much everything that wasn't directly related to what he was doing at that exact moment. As he bent to replace the cover Dylan noticed the flexi lying just inside the opening where Harper had abandoned it when Dylan had come in. Not really thinking about he fished it out of the conduit then finished replacing the cover. After finally arriving at his destination he laid the flexi on the console and forgot about it that is until his hand bumped into it and sent it fluttering to the floor. With a sigh he bent to retrieve it, suddenly deciding to find out what exactly Harper had been doing with the flexi. Dylan began to scan the last file opened but stopped dead after just the first line, "Beyond Good and Evil".

" Nietzche, Harper's been reading Nietzche?"


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"_For lo even as the Fallen did try to strike her down the Mother endures and will endure for all time, for so long as her sons live on so too does the Mother."_

Psalm 115; Books of the Brethren

It felt good to be home, the only home Beka Valentine had ever known even after meeting Dylan Hunt and his idealistic battle ship, especially good after a weeks worth of battering her head against Nietzchiens. Now if she could just get her environmental officer's attention.

"Trance, Trance?" Beka had been trying to get the Avatar's attention for what seemed like forever, but was really about two minutes. Seeing as subtle had never been her first choice anyway she decided to revert to type and loudly, but carefully, banged her tray down onto the table of the Maru's kitchen slash dining room slash meeting room. After all she didn't want her lunch to go everywhere, then again considering that she had made it maybe it would be better to just skip the eating part and head straight to the part where she tossed it in the reclamation chute. Cooking had never been one of her strengths, she did better with flying, running away, and if necessary, fighting. The sound effect worked and Trance actually looked up from whatever it was she was studying.

"Hey whatcha' got?" Beka half craned her neck trying to read what Trance had. She had already deciding to skip eating anyway in favor of whatever had Trance so interested

"It's a pamphlet I picked up on Phoenix drift." Trance half turned it so her captain and unofficial "big sister" could read it.

"Great", although she wasn't sure that it really was, but lately Trance had been withdrawn and anything that got her to pay attention to something besides her plants was fine with Beka. "What's it about?"

"It's by a group that call themselves the Brethren of Earth."

"Brethren of Earth?" To Beka it sounded like a bunch of nuts, but she wasn't going to put down anything that got Trance out of her shell.

"Yeah they seemed really nice." For a moment Trace's voice took on the enthusiastic tone that Beka remember from before, well from before a lot of things.

"Nice, so what did they ask for it?" In Beka's experience nothing was free, not even pamphlets from religious nuts.

"They were just handing them out to anyone who wanted one."

Beka couldn't imagine many takers, most of the people on Phoenix were like her, ships captains and spacers that had seen it all and done even more, not the type to be taken in by the latest con. "Not many takers probably."

"Actually the man told me they had run out twice since they had started handing them around two hours before."

"That sounds like a lot of those things. Did he say how many Brethren there were on the station?" Her gut was telling her this might be important after all, more important that just entertaining Trance and Beka never ignored her gut, it had kept her alive too many times.

"Two dozen when they showed up, but that they had been lucky and a lot of people had joined since then, almost as many as they started with."

"When did they show up?"

"About week before us from what people were saying."

"Mind if I borrow that when you're done?" If this bunch could double their numbers

in that short of a time, especially in a place like Phoenix drift then Beka definitely wanted to know more about them and her gut was telling her that Dylan was going to want to hear about this when they got back.


	7. Chapter 7

"Harper?" Andromeda, the ships holographic avatar appeared standing behind her chief engineer

"Yaaah!" Harper successfully jumped forward, sideways and executed a one-eighty spin all at the same time landing 1.23 meters down the corridor from where he had been standing when Andromeda appeared and facing in the opposite direction. He managed all this while apparently trying to climb the wall and screaming multiple obscenities in what her data base informed her was Gaelic, a language that had been nearly extinct even before Earth's untimely demise. All of these thoughts plus several billion more flowed through her AI matrix in the time it took for Harper to carry out his bizarre evolution.

"Yeah Rom Doll?"

"What are you doing?" Her glance took in the pack hanging on his back, the case slung over his shoulder and the battered black duster folded over one arm, add to that the fact that he was transiting the corridor with a purposeful stride very unlike his usual manic scurry indicated he was "up to something" to quote the captain.

"What makes you think I'm doin' something?" Harper tried his best "aww shucks" look, he knew it wasn't working, but he tried anyway.

Andromeda didn't respond, simply cocked her head to one side and lifting one eyebrow. He could see her eyes skimming over him and knew what she was about to say.

"I've just got some errands to run you know, parts to buy, Sparky to stock up on I mean can you believe it they don't even make the stuff on Terazed?" He knew he was babbling, the theory was if he talked fast enough the person he was talking to would forget what they were talking about trying to keep track of what he was saying. Sometimes it worked; this time wasn't one of them.

"Funny I don't seem to have a flight plan or itinerary on file."

"Well you know me; I'd forget my neural port if it wasn't attached."

"Harper.." Andromeda had moved from annoyed but slightly amused to just plain annoyed. "I can't let you leave without knowing where you're going to be."

"Right, right, regulations." Harper waved his hands dismissively. He let his mouth run just to keep her distracted, again using babbling to cover. He really, really hated what he was about to do, but he could already see Andromeda had decided to file a report.

"_Sa na ainm darn a maither"* _He'd planted the override weeks before as part of a software upgrade. The hologram blinked out as the system reset, erasing this entire incident from the Andromeda's data banks, replacing it with a loop bearing the same timestamp showing an empty corridor. He had picked this hour of the night because no one besides Andromeda would be around to wonder what he was up to. They wouldn't even know he was gone for hours.

"I'm sorry Rom Doll maybe you'll forgive me, someday, maybe." He whispered sadly, turning back toward the docking bay

*Gaelic: " In the name of the Mother"


	8. Chapter 8

"Has anyone seen Harper today?" Becca paused, frowning as she scanned Command as if expecting to find Harper hiding under a console.

"Now that you mention it, no." Doyle stopped what she was doing at Tactical and turned to look at her.

Dylan lifted his head from Environmental and looked off into empty space giving orders to mid air. "Andromeda, locate Mr. Harper."

The holographic avatar flicked into being, sending him a puzzled look. "Captain, he isn't showing up on any of my sensors."

"Who isn't showing up?" Trance had walked in alongside Rommie just as the hologram was delivering her report.

"Harper! " Becca snarled "I swear if that little…"

"Hello." Everyone turned at once startled by Harper's voice coming from the middle of Command. They had been distracted by Becca and hadn't noticed the appearance of the hologrammatic version of the object of her rant. The first thing they noticed was the characteristic Harper slouch, or more precisely, the lack of it. The holo was standing well… not straight and tall, but not in the half slump, half slouch that was usual for Harper, but lightly, balanced like a cat waiting to pounce. The next thing that caught the eye was an uncharacteristically serious look. Gone was the slight smirk, the insane twinkle in the eye. Instead his smile was soft, nearly sad and his eyes were level and hard, the look of a man that knew exactly what he was doing and knew exactly what the cost of it would be. This was a Harper none of them knew, a Harper none of them suspected existed.

"Since you're seeing this it means that someone, probably Becca, noticed I'm gone. I'm sure you're thinking, what the heck is this? So I'll keep it short and sweet. Becca..." The recording turned toward Tactical as if it could see her standing there. "Becca I know you're thinking that you're going to have to save me from some crazy stunt. Well I'm sure that you'll think I'm crazy, but this time you can't save me. You were the big sister I never had and without you I wouldn't have lasted five minutes off Earth. Thank you for making me a citizen of the galaxy." The holo's head turned toward Doyle standing next to Becca. "Doyle, I know you're wondering, why didn't I take you with me? I could tell you that you can't go where I'm going and that would be kind of true. The whole truth is that I don't want you to have to go where I'm going. I don't want you to remember me that way. Remember me this way,please."

"Rommie..." The Ship made Flesh looked up on hearing her name from the hologram.

"I know that you're going to be pissed with me once you figure out what I did, if you haven't already. I didn't want to, but we don't get to do what we want, we just do what we have to. I know you understand that, probably better than anyone else."

"Trance.." The recording gave a ghost of a smile, a distant cousin of Harper's usual grin.

"I had a big speech, but heck you probably knew everything I was going to say. So I'll just say thanks."

"Captain Dylan Hunt…" With this the hologram actually came up straight, standing closer to attention than Harper ever had in person. "I left a lot of things behind when I left Earth. Some of them were things I didn't even realize I had left, until I met you. You reminded me that it isn't enough to just live; you have to have something to live for. You have to have dreams, and fighting for those dreams is what makes us human." With that the hologram pulled itself up into a perfect attention and snapped a salute that would have done an academy graduate proud. "Hold the line Captain Hunt. We're coming." The holo flickered out of existence holding that picture perfect salute, and left five very confused crew members staring at the space it had occupied.


	9. Chapter 9

"Dylan." Trance didn't even turn her head as he walked through the doors to the Obs deck.

"Trance." He paused to settle himself on the bench looking out through the massive observation ports that gave the room its name. The silence stretched, not uncomfortably, just one of those moments in between the moments when something was being said or done. "I used to spend a lot more time down here, talking to Rev usually."

"He liked it here, said it made him feel more in touch with the Divine."

Dylan turned to look at her. This… Being, he supposed that once she would have been counted a goddess, there were still those that would consider her just that. Nearly infinite seeming power to create and destroy, a million possible futures in her head at any given time, but still, even though he knew all that, somehow she never stopped being just Trance.

"What's going on Trance? What the hell is Harper up to?" He let the frustration leak out from behind the disciplined façade of a High Guard captain. Three hundred plus years, the last bit of it trying to resurrect, with Harper and Becca and Trance's help, not so much the Commonwealth, but the ideals of the Commonwealth. He thought he knew them, knew what they could and couldn't do, knew how hard and how far to push, but the Harper in that message, the Harper that overrode Andromeda's internal security and snuck off like a Night-sider, that was a Harper he'd never met, never imagined.

"I can't." The no longer purple young seeming woman didn't look at him when she answered.

"Can't or won't Trance." Hunt had learned poker from the best and he could tell a bluff when he saw it.

"Both and neither, I don't know everything that's happening or that will happen. This isn't my time anymore. I haven't lived this life so a lot of it is just as big a surprise to me as it is you."

"But not this, come on Trance. I can't let Harper do this without knowing what _this_ is."

"You're going to have to, even if I told you, you can't change what's coming."

"You've already said that the future isn't written in stone. It can be changed if we work at it."

"Ok try it this way; I can't let you change it."

"Why can't you let me change it, if it can be changed which you just said it can't be anyway." Dylan was, as usual, getting a headache just from talking to her. The organic mind wasn't designed for four dimensional thought."

"I can't tell you, because if I do you'll try and then things will get…complicated."

"Is this what you call simple?!" Dylan couldn't help it, of all conversations he'd had with Trance, as confusing as they had usually been, this was swiftly becoming the most frustrating.

"Compared to what could be happening Dylan, yes."

"So what am I supposed to do, just let Harper go do whatever this is that he's doing?"

"Exactly…"

Dylan stood and prepared to leave, no more enlightened then when he came down here. Nothing had really changed, he still didn't know what was happening with Harper or why, just that it was important enough to keep him out of the loop.

"Dylan?"

"Yes Trance?"

"I can tell you this, it will be worth it." Dylan turned to look at her over his shoulder. This time she met his eyes confidently.

"I guess that will have to do, for now." With that Captain Dylan Hunt left to Obs deck to make his way back up to Command. There was still work to do.


	10. Chapter 10

Time passed as it always does. Terazed command assigned a new engineer, a Persied warrant officer named Hahne. He was competent of course, Dylan had never met an incompetent Persied, crazy on occasion or at least obsessive, but never incompetent. He didn't have whatever spark had made Harper, well Harper, though. Whether he was a genius as he often proclaimed or more likely insane as a Nightsider in broad daylight he had been truly one of a kind, and his absence was missed. Still life always went on and it wasn't long before Andromeda and her command crew was besieged by what seemed daily crises. This was how Dylan had come here, to Admiral Telemachus Rahde's office on Terazed.

"Admiral Rhade. Dylan was able to pull a credible salute to his one time subordinate.

"Captain Hunt." Telemachus stepped around the imposing desk that he had inherited from the last, unlamented head of fleet operations and pulled his former commander and on occasion best friend into the kind of rough bear hug he once wouldn't have dreamed of bestowing on anyone outside his pride.

"How is everyone doing?" He asked as he stepped back.

Dylan would have had to admit to a certain shock from the greeting, Nietzscheans were, in his experience, highly reserved to non pride members. He wasn't sure how to answer the question, everyone had seemed, off somehow since Harper left.

"Ok, not the same, but ok."

"I would never have imagined Harper leaving Andromeda. I always thought he would have to be carried off on his back."

"It seems none of us knew him as well as we thought." Dylan winced inwardly at the obviousness of that.

"Unfortunately I didn't ask you here to catch up, well at least not just to catch up." He settled his weight on the front corner of the desk and reached for a flexi. "There's been a lot of activity in Drago-Kazov territory these past few months, none of it aimed specifically at us it seems, but with Nietzscheans that can change in a heartbeat." A half shrug and scowl was all the indication he gave of his thoughts about the non-Commonwealth members of his race. "So we ordered a survey by a long range recon patrol. This is some of what they found."

He slid the flimsy in front of Dylan and activated it. At first it showed just empty space but the view slowly"swung" around as the LRS reoriented its sensors. What appeared as the pictured changed was a fleet or the remains of one anyway. Dylan recognized the hulks of Gilgamesh class cruisers, Garuda class attack craft and pieces of half a dozen other ship classes, nearly two hundred ships all together.

"What happened? He'd seen worse of course, no High Guard captain worth the commission these days had got there without being in more than one scrape. What was shocking was that it was a Nietzschean fleet. To his knowledge no one had handed the Nietzscheans a defeat on this scale since Witch head nebula.

"Good question, this is the answer we think. The patrol picked up a signal, took awhile to decode it, the encryption was extremely dense." He reached for a second flexi and handed it over. There was no video, just an audio recording.

"This is Bunker Hill. We are the Human Liberation Army, the sons and daughters of a murdered world. We will not be robbed of our rightful place in the universe anymore. We stand together, one people, one voice and say to all who think they have the right to enslave and exterminate us, never again! This is Bunker Hill signing off."

"We've decoded dozens more since this one, all audio only; all code names, most drawn from human history, Bunker Hill, Kursk, El-Alamein, Tuetenberg, fifty or so all together. Whether they're people or places we're not sure. Intel believes that Drago-Kazov is fighting a full fledged insurrection of its slave worlds, possibly all nine-hundred but certainly a significant portion. Of course they're not sure of that, it could be propaganda, misdirection or almost anything else.

"Let me guess, that's where Andromeda comes in."

"Pretty much, the Commonwealth just doesn't have the resources to send more than one ship to investigate and Andromeda is the best we have."

"So what is the mission profile, exactly?" Dylan had a reasonably clear idea, but wanted all the facts before he started planning what was sounding like an incursion into the territory of a hostile major power.

"Basically, take a look around Dragan territory and see what's really happening. Assess the situation and determine whether the Commonwealth should or even can take any action and what that action should be."

"Am I dismissed then Admiral?" Dylan straightened to attention and made the request in formal military fashion, though with a half smile.

"Dismissed Captain Hunt, Rhade answered with his own half smile. Good hunting Captain, and Dylan?" Hunt turned from the door. "Watch yourself; we don't have that many captains left, we can't afford to waste you."


	11. Chapter 11

"Doyle, sensors?" Dylan was pacing between stations.

"Sensors are showing all clear so far." The same thing they were showing when you asked me five minutes ago the android added silently. Inwardly she chided herself for the thought, sneaking in the Dragans back door was nerve wracking work even for her, and she didn't technically have nerves.

"Beka?" He didn't look away from forward display, just beginning to show the edge of the debris field.

"Slipstream is ready and waiting." Beka let her exasperation creep into her voice. Dylan turned to the note in her voice and met her steady gaze before finally giving a half abashed shrug. This wasn't even the most dangerous thing they'd done as a crew, but still something had him on edge about this set up. Maybe the fact that an unknown or at least previously unheard of opponent had torn apart a Dragan battle fleet and left no trace of whom they were or where they came from was the problem. Hard to say really, again it wouldn't be the first time Andromeda and her crew had gone looking for the unknown, still Dylan Hunt was a man who had learned the hard way not to ignore a hunch.

"All stop, Andromeda launch a recon drone."

"Drone away Captain", Andromeda's hologram appeared next to him. "Nothing so far, wait I'm picking up a distress beacon, moving to investigate.

"Carefully, I don't like this." Dylan felt his gut tighten in anticipation.

An eye searing flash cut off the ships report in mid sentence

"What was that?! Andromeda, report."

"The drone had begun a scan of the source of the beacon, the indicated vessel lit in red.

The scan must have tripped something; the weapons came online and fired before I could move away."

"Trance, life signs?"

"Nothing, unless they're heavily shielded there's no one out there."

"What do you think?" Dylan was hoping her more, unusual senses, were telling her more than the ships sensors

The ancient girl closed her eyes for a moment, trying to reach out with senses that no organic could even imagine let alone understand. "No, there's no one there."

"Captain I've isolated the distress beacon. It appears to have been…altered." Hahne had been quietly manning engineering, now he turned to address Dylan.

"Altered ?"

"The cruiser is broadcasting some sort of virus it would appear."

"A virus?"

"Yes sir, of course it's far to primitive to pose a threat to Andromeda, but as you know Neitzcheans don't use AI's and from what I've deduced of it's structure it would be more than sufficient to paralyze a Nietzchean ship, which I surmise would then have been destroyed by the trap that you so cunningly revealed. Hahne paused to give the rest of the crew time to catch up with his brilliant hypothesis. It wasn't that he was smug, just that, like all his people he liked a job well done. Unfortunately for him he was dealing with the most experienced crew in the new Commonwealth, which meant they had already moved past his conclusion.

"Beka steer us a course around the center of this, let's see if we can find a less, active, area." He turned back to watch the forward screen, catching the slightly dejected posture of his chief engineer in passing.

Without turning his head he spoke. "Good catch ." He didn't have to look to see the engineer straighten with pride. It was several slow, excruciating hours later when Beka, Dylan and Hahne worked their way over to what was left of a Garuda class attack craft through an umbilical extending from docking bay three. Dylan could almost feel the nerves radiating from the engineer, he thought back to the Persieds service record. He had spent his time in R and D this was his first field posting.

"Easy does it Mr. Hahne, just like zero g training."

"Of course Captain. Just like training."

"Except for the possibility of dying horribly in a Niet booby trap." Beka chimed up earning a sour look from Dylan and a horrified stare from the Warrant.

"Let's just focus on the job at hand. Dylan waved Hahne forward after scanning the closed airlock. Mr. Hahne if you please."

"Oh! Of course Sir." Dylan's voice startled him out of contemplating all the things that could go wrong. He grabbed the nano welder from his tool belt and started working on the airlock release. Having a job he knew he was good at made all the difference and it only took seconds to get the doors open. As Beka stepped past the engineer, drawing her force lance to cover Dylan as he moved into the passage that led from the airlock to the cockpit, she thought that Harper would have done better, and then quickly suppressed it. It wasn't Hahne's fault he wasn't Harper, it was Harper's fault for not being there.

Dylan advanced down the passage, leading with his force lance, taking a knee as he came to the intersection his force lance down the left hand corridor then waving her forward to cover the other side. Once they both sides of the intersection covered he waved Hahne forward, holding up a hand to stop the Warrant just short of them. A nod was all that Beka needed to pivot smoothly and cover the left hand corridor while he mirrored the move. Then a second turn brought them across the intersection each pointing the direction they had started out in, her covering the right hand, Dylan covering the left.

Still using hand signals in case there were traps that could be set off by a comm signal he waved Hahne across then shifted to cover the doors to Command. The engineers nerves seemed to have steadied as the mission went on, maybe if they had been less steady he would have checked the scanner before he tried to open the door. The explosion slammed both Dylan and Beka back down the corridor driving them into the wall past the airlock. Hahne never had a chance.


	12. Chapter 12

Dylan opened his eye, slowly; feeling like a Vedran was sitting on each eyelid. He felt like someone had landed a Swarmship on him. As the fuzziness began to resolve itself into the med bay he turned his head to find Trance standing next to the bed.

"Ok, what happened?

"There was a booby trap." Trance looked at him with sympathy, not for his physical pain, he could take worse than this, but for the pain that was about to come.

"What about the others?" Dylan braced himself for the news that Trance's expression warned him was coming.

"Beka is hurt, about as badly as you. Hahne… didn't make it. He was right on top of the bomb; he probably never even saw it coming."

"Unlike you right Trance?" Dylan couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"I didn't know…"

"We both know that's a lie Trance, dammit! We had a deal; if I need to know something crucial to the mission you'll tell me!"

"I didn't know if you needed to know this!" Trance's anger was the first real emotion he'd seen since Harper's disappearance.

"You should have told me anyway." Dylan let his head fall back onto the bed, exhausted from the surge of emotion.

"I could have, and maybe you or Beka would have died instead. That can't happen, Hahne was a good person, but people die whether they're good or not. Sometimes it just doesn't matter what you do or don't do, people die." Trance almost shouted that last part, then she just seemed to collapse, crumpling to the deck holding her head in her hands.

It took almost more effort than his screaming muscles had in them, but Dylan managed to roll up to a sitting position and stand, placing a hand on Trance's shaking shoulder.

"I'm not going to say I'm sorry, because I'm not. I'm still damn mad Trance. You're right, sometimes people die no matter what you do, but you still have to try. I'm just going to have trust there was a good reason for this."

Trance raised her head and took his outstretched hand, not really using the help, just accepting the peace offering. "I always have reasons Dylan, I can't judge whether you'd see them as good or bad. I can only say my intentions are always good."


	13. Chapter 13

Dylan stared moodily at the flimsy on his desk; there was no worse part of a captain's job than this, notifying a crew member's loved ones that they weren't coming home. He had no idea how long he'd been sitting here just staring at the blank flexi, trying to come up with the words when the door slid soundlessly open allowing Doyle into the ready room.

"I thought you might like to see this," she extended a flexi to him and took a seat across the desk as Dylan looked it over and began her explanation.

"We've been looking for clues to whom or what is behind this, right?"

"That's the mission." A mission that so far had cost one crewmember their life and yielded nothing useable.

"Well intel is sure that there's some kind of code embedded in these messages, they just haven't been able to find it.

"Ok," so far Doyle wasn't saying anything that he didn't already know.

'I started thinking about how each message referred to an Earth battle, specifically ones named after the location they took place."

"Most battles are named after where they happen." She knew Dylan wasn't objecting to her reasoning, he was just playing devil's advocate as Harper would have called it.

"Right, but not all, so I started to think that the names mattered, I tried re arranging the letters, anything at all really, then I started to think about _where_ these places are, well were."

"We know where they all were."

"Not just what planet, but where they were on Earth." She reached over and tapped on the corner of the flexi changing the display to a map of Earth overlaid with a grid of lines. "Harper mentioned how humans used to find locations on Earth using a grid they called latitude and longitude."

"Most races plot their worlds using something similar."

"Right, so I started plotting the battles I could find info about on the grid…" She tapped the corner of the flexi again. The map of Earth was covered in pulsing red dots.

"Each dot represents a battle I could find in our data base."

"So now what?" Dylan still couldn't see were this was going.

"Well I began looking at this map." A second tap on the flexi brought up a map of the Nietzchean region of the Known Galaxies. A scattering of red dots pulsed across it.

"These are the attacks that we've found out about, and a lot of these are guesses based on second hand reports or from the transmissions. I spent hours looking at the two then it just came to me." A third tap overlay the map of the Earth battles on top of the map of Nietzchean space. Successive taps shifted each map until the red dots on the galactic map merged with the marks on the Earth map.

"Then I lined up the maps until I got as many matches as I could."

"So the battles used in the messages are codes…?"

"For the attacks! Whether they're telling whoever is doing this where to attack or that an attack has been made I'm not sure but that's not the most interesting thing. Every system of co ordinates starts somewhere, and on Earth it started where the Prime Meridian intersected what humans called the Equator." Another quick tap on the flexi centered the image over an intersection of the lines on the map. The name of the system they met over glowed.

"The Sol system." Doyle waited, letting Dylan connected the dots

"Earth."


End file.
